Nation-Building Elevated

[M-A Lagrange]

Steve,

Thanks and sorry for the bad English and spelling… (Have a ####ty computer at work. Luckily, I also suffer from insomnia and a recent computer at "home").

Now let's make the last move: the link between State building and war: COIN.

There again, I'll come back to CvC. What is the aim of war? To impose a political dictate to an opponent disagreeing with you (Sorry Wilf, I do not have the book with me).
How do you achieve it? By imposing either a policy to an enemy or by imposing a government favorable to your views.
This drives us back to the article at the beginning of the threat: "winning peace".

Basically the new paradigm of war is that for modern armies, the technological, the firepower, manpower and training difference is so huge that the conventional confrontation phase (Shock) is no more a problem. Cf Iraq, Afghanistan…
What are the new strategic phases are the "hold" phase and the "build" phase.
Hold should be the imposition of a monopole of violence by a new actor creating the condition to build a Weberian State. That's basically what nobody is good at. Especially when you face two main oppositions:
- First, one or several bodies not willing to let you be the new owner of the monopoly of violence. Cf Iraq and the "insurgency" led by Sadam Husen in a first time then the civil war that followed when there were no traces of the former State apparatus. All the Shia/Sunny conflict in Iraq is based on that competition between the US and each communities/cite (in Greek in the text) to have the monopoly of violence on a limited piece of land. In addition to that, you had the Al Quada threat which was willing to challenge the US on its capacity to be the external owner of the monopole of violence. (It's a resume).
- Secondly a context/cultural opposition (mainly Afghanistan) based on the opposition of Stateless societies to State society. Basically the tribes/warlords/druglords being opposed to any kind of centralized State.
In some extend Radical religious ideology can be more or less assimilated to Stateless actors (that's what they what to make us believe). But as JMM demonstrated in fact, the Caliphate or what ever else form of Religious Government is a Sate based society.
This is where State and Nation building enter in the game.

The confrontation is no more based on military legitimacy but on people legitimacy. War among the people is not only a war taking place among the people as a theatre of operation but the battle for the domination of the people as define in CvC trinity.
Some simplistic minds take it as reversing CvC: the use of force to establish/legitimate leadership on people.
The problem is unfortunately more complex as the CvC trinity is not dissociable, works in both senses (there is always a looser) and is the root of the cite.
So you have to challenge the previous cite by a new cite model.
This is where my personal obsession for Foucault comes from. (The critic of elections as a technical tool to build democracy like Weberian State).

State Building/Nation Building and COIN:
COIN, as the Surge, is based on State building: build a State apparatus that will have the characteristics we want (Elite, copycat administration, rule of law as primary policy…)
Population centric COIN is based on COIN + the new end of Modern State: the responsibility to protect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/20...m11701.doc.htm, http://www.operationspaix.net/IMG/pd...e-16-Final.pdf...).

The main challenge of Nation building is to build this responsibility to protect while State building is to build the State Apparatus that will allow to develop/impose (pick up the one you like) an economy that will support it.

PS: you also made me touch the very limits of my underground culture. I love South Park but was much unaware of the underpants gnomes business model. Too much time in field I believe and not enough in front of TV.

M-A

[jmm99]

with much to think about.

What I glean is that the discourse hinges on the concepts of the "nation-state", the "nation" and the "state". The Wiki Nation state (no "bible") tosses out some concepts and issues.

I suppose that the questions revolve about the whether and how of building, assisting, supporting: (1) a nation-state; (2) a nation; or (3) a state. Like most high-flying questions, the amount of theories and perceived "best practices" abound - often conflict, but are interesting.

Still, all of that flies far above (but the results will surely affect) the village I'm currently thinking about. That is a place with a guy, his kid and wife with their two donkeys; and the former spearchuckers clustered with their cattle at the watering point (AKs and RPGs may or may not be left hidden in the underbrush). Then we have the village: umbrella huts surrounded by a prickly brush barrier - juxtaposed to adjacent steel structures of indifferent repair. So, my village is certainly a collage - and, perhaps, a mallage.

I do, however, have some doubt as to whether the theory and practice of the Westphalian nation-state will enter into that village's Narrative and become one of its Motivating Causes (borrowing from another thread, which is closely linked to this one).

The nation-state - the 500m target; the village - the 25m target. I'm still plinking, but enjoying the discussion.

Regards

Mike

[Steve the Planner]

Well....

Probably just icing on Dahayun's cake, but I come out of two edu-theories of nations and national structure/wealth.

Without dispute, a nation that soaks itself dry, which produces nothing, adds nothing to a civic path, is, if not failed, failing. Plenty of examples of nations lost in their own issues, and going nowhere.

The goal in US nation-building is, in most cases, to supplant indigenous leadership, and initiate a substantive (and secular) change in a place that, already by self-selection, is a problem child, if not a basket case.

But our military and foreign policy objectives are not grounded in basic history of the emergence and vitality of successful places/regions or nations, and the routine transformative local or regional drivers, or unique comparative resource, locational or economic advantages that differentiate a failing area from a prospering one.

In Iraq, as I met many of the senior technocrats, they were proud of their role in twice rebuilding their country after major wars, even against the restraints of embargos, and arbitrary dictatorial government. Might not be paradise to us, but they were proud of what they had done, and on many levels, antagonistic to US civ/mil efforts that kept them from their duties/pride in rebuilding their country themselves. VP Mahdi was in Washington yesterday, and unambiguous about their self-determination, and getting the US forces out---to fly, they need us to get out of the way.

As MG Caslan (MND-North) said last month on his public post-tour debrief, he was skeptical of turning things over to Iraqis, but Gen Odierno impressed on him how important it was for the Iraqis, and the zeal they had for self-rule and independence (even with risks of instability).

Smoke and mirrors aside, Iraq has substantial resource, locational and cultural elements that, if they don't tear it apart, will drive it forward---with or without us.

But Afghanistan is a different problem all together. Current Afghans are born into economic, geographic, logistical and resource limitations, despite that it may have been prosperous once. But our strategy does not succeed by helping them to tread water----they have to grow, change, reinvent themselves in remarkable ways to meet our objectives---and it is not happening.

I don't believe that it is not happening because of them, but because of US. We are back to the same old top-down, project and program thing that drove so much of the criminality and corruption---no effective focus, synchronization of actions,or measuarble and sustainable goals.

Our operational focus is not to transform Afghanistan, but to deliver projects and programs already sold somewhere else. Right now,our deliverable is "boots on the ground", and dollars deployed, but we have no realistic transformative strategy or plan that can create 1+1>2 dynamics. Right now, we are still struggling to make 1+1=1, and that isn't going to achieve what we need.

In economic geography, we learn that resources, linkages, transporation and trade patterns, nodality, populations, all create and shape the economic bones of a place, and the collection and connection of those places creates the hierarchy that is a nation, and the reason to bound and defend it as a nation distinct from the "other" places.

Similarly, but from a different perspective, is Jane Jacobs, whose epic tome, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, derives from the shopkeeper, sidewalk interactions, and local associations,interactions and businesses that builds the framework for a city (not to exclude modern suburban distributed city forms), and the city drives the region, which adds up to the wealth and connectivity of nation.

Last April, I had the opportunity to talk with John Adams, em. prof of econ geography at UMinn about US military/foreign policy strategies for building nations in the top-down, just add water approach. It simply defies history, reality and functional evidence. You have to first find and develop some unique economic value, or hope for one, in a place to set that place in motion, and the rest of the places have to raise to a level that regional interactions can become transformative drivers (1+1>2).

If we want to see Afghanistan become something other than what it is, we need to get smart and focused, and become very Afghan-oriented. Maybe, but who will drive and deliver that?





Long ago, I learned that knowledge is transferable, but wisdom is not.

But, this business of implementing unstructured and unfocused projects and programs, for the last decade in Afghanistan and Iraq has shown that 1+1<2 if poorly conceived, unsynchronized to any viable local attributes.

The more I watch the logistic dog collar pulling back on our limits in Afghanistan, the more sure I am that, unlike Iraq,

[William F. Owen]

There again, I'll come back to CvC. What is the aim of war? To impose a political dictate to an opponent disagreeing with you (Sorry Wilf, I do not have the book with me).

Well at least you're trying!

How do you achieve it? By imposing either a policy to an enemy or by imposing a government favorable to your views.
This drives us back to the article at the beginning of the threat: "winning peace".

Allow me: Ideally you do it by "destroying his armed force" - that is kill/capture them, until they give up. Works and proven to do so. - but you may have to settle for something less as the setting forth of policy can also change the policy.
If you are not using violence, you are using diplomacy.

[M-A Lagrange]

Allow me: Ideally you do it by "destroying his armed force" - that is kill/capture them, until they give up. Works and proven to do so. - but you may have to settle for something less as the setting forth of policy can also change the policy.
If you are not using violence, you are using diplomacy.

Wilf, we are talking about the hold/build phase. They already have given up military, at least most of them.

Dayuhan,

Look at it from the other direction. What if the state we want to build contains multiple societies? What if these multiple societies are traditional rivals? What if they distrust each other, or loathe each other? These conditions are going to have a very real impact on the capacity to build a state, a nation, or an economy.

This answers to your first comment. The trick and what is fooling us is that we look at countries as a homogenous body while in many failed state, it's a patchwork of small entities more or less federated by a central inefficient State.
The cite can be restricted to the very core Aristotle definition: the agora. A land: a village, a leadership: the elders, an army: the men of the village (in CvC trinity).

Mike,

Still, all of that flies far above (but the results will surely affect) the village I'm currently thinking about. That is a place with a guy, his kid and wife with their two donkeys; and the former spearchuckers clustered with their cattle at the watering point (AKs and RPGs may or may not be left hidden in the underbrush). Then we have the village: umbrella huts surrounded by a prickly brush barrier - juxtaposed to adjacent steel structures of indifferent repair. So, my village is certainly a collage - and, perhaps, a mallage.

I think you are targeting the right level. But it appears that we want to first fixe the 500 m target before going to the 25 m target. Funding also come into the question. It's much cheaper to fix the State apparatus before fixing the problematic of all the small villages.
Afghanistan is a very good example of this. The assembly was created to bring together all the potential Elite that could enter our definition of it and ease the establishment of a centralized State. But we did not look at the lower level: do those people represent more than a village or a fragile structure based on violence domination a combination of Stateless entities and Charismatic/traditional domination.
Afghanistan like many others failed States is like an onion. You have several layers of complex societal organization and we come to impose another one, just because it is the one we are familiar with.

I can see "technical" problems also. It's difficult to build both State administration and Nation at village level. But not impossible, just more expensive.

Steve,

In Iraq, as I met many of the senior technocrats, they were proud of their role in twice rebuilding their country after major wars, even against the restraints of embargos, and arbitrary dictatorial government. Might not be paradise to us, but they were proud of what they had done, and on many levels, antagonistic to US civ/mil efforts that kept them from their duties/pride in rebuilding their country themselves. VP Mahdi was in Washington yesterday, and unambiguous about their self-determination, and getting the US forces out---to fly, they need us to get out of the way.

As MG Caslan (MND-North) said last month on his public post-tour debrief, he was skeptical of turning things over to Iraqis, but Gen Odierno impressed on him how important it was for the Iraqis, and the zeal they had for self-rule and independence (even with risks of instability).

Smoke and mirrors aside, Iraq has substantial resource, locational and cultural elements that, if they don't tear it apart, will drive it forward---with or without us.

But Afghanistan is a different problem all together. Current Afghans are born into economic, geographic, logistical and resource limitations, despite that it may have been prosperous once. But our strategy does not succeed by helping them to tread water----they have to grow, change, reinvent themselves in remarkable ways to meet our objectives---and it is not happening.

You describe exactly what I am talking about.
Empirically, I see two main kind of State building contexts or a context of State building (Iraq) and one context of Nation Building (Afghanistan), to make it simple.

As Steve clearly explains, Iraq was a "developed State" with all the characteristics of a Weberian State before the war. I did live in Iraq in 1978 and it was an average Middle East country with high potential (and yes I was a little boy at that time, so what? ).

Pre war Afgahnistan is a Stateless country with an attempt of Weberian State. (Cannot say it worked out nor any of us did support it. We were much too busy defeating USSR at that time).
In such context, the remark of Dayuhan takes all its sense. What is the cite? Basically the village Mike is thinking of.
In my perception, we should approach such contexts as a sea of sand and rocks with island and look at it with a Carl Schmitt approach. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Schmitt) Each village is a land with its specific and limited imperium and le land between each village an open space: a sea with a constellation of islands to be conquered. (Land and Sea. Simona Draghici, trans. (Plutarch Press, 1997). Original publication: 1954.)
Taliban or any insurgents are pirates, just like in Grotius and the right of gents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Grotius): a group of armed people without land and looking to take treasure but not an imperium.

M-A

[Steve the Planner]

MA Lagrange:

Very good analogy.

As a relative youngster, Uncle Sam decided that I would enjoy wandering the Countryside in Germany, in and around Hof (the interior German Border). As I walked through the forest between the little castles, I would come across these interesting little buildings in the forest with steep onion domed roofs, and slathered with religious themes of safe-guarding travelers from bandits.

That's how western europe, and especially german areas functioned for centuries. Constant inter-town and mini-state squabbling and wars. Travelers between faced the deadly risk of a night in the forest with the bandits that lived between. The steep roofs prevented them from waiting above to pounce on the travelers when the came out.

It is the history of the world. The fact that some places are still in that mode should not be surprising, and must be understood.

Tom Ricks, for example, is always going on about Iraq's "unravelling." I enjoy his work, but Iraq's history (dating back fro millenia) is of strong city-states and the regions they control, and not of our high school text book version of "democracy." Even during the Salah ad Din and Ottoman days, major cities like Mosul ran themselves---much more complex governance structure than appears to the outsider.

So what if Iraq decided, when all was said and done, to basically return to a city/region structure, loosely bound by national trappings and exigencies? Would that be an unraveling, or just a further refinement on a long-standing historical pattern and practice.

Today's Wash Post explained how the Afghan Reconstruction effort is grinding against the reality of illiteracy, lack of phones, mobility, etc... to extend government.

If all of our "advancement" is predicated on literacy, and only the school kids will have it, we run the risk of creating a little-kid technocratic dictatorship that local customs, practices and leaders will chew up and spit out for breakfast in the same manner as Afghan reactions to communism and secularism in the 1970s.

Where's that headed?

Steve

[jmm99]

In many cases (your case), we are looking at islands in the sand or boats on the sea. The question is how to link the islands or boats and draw them closer - an example that worked, the Iroquois Confederation (originally five, very warring tribes) - Wilf calls that "diplomacy" and I'm fine with that; but that begs the question of who does the "diplomacy".

As to this:

from MA

I think you are targeting the right level. But it appears that we want to first fixe the 500 m target before going to the 25 m target. Funding also come into the question. It's much cheaper to fix the State apparatus before fixing the problematic of all the small villages.

Afghanistan is a very good example of this. The assembly was created to bring together all the potential Elite that could enter our definition of it and ease the establishment of a centralized State. But we did not look at the lower level: do those people represent more than a village or a fragile structure based on violence domination a combination of Stateless entities and Charismatic/traditional domination.

Afghanistan like many others failed States is like an onion. You have several layers of complex societal organization and we come to impose another one, just because it is the one we are familiar with.

I can see "technical" problems also. It's difficult to build both State administration and Nation at village level. But not impossible, just more expensive.

Were that Astan and other problem "states" like an onion - at least that is a compact entity with defined layers.

I agree that what you say seems to be what is usually done (shoot the 500m target), which is the "quick and cheap" fix approach. If you are the practitioner tasked with doing that by your "boss" (US, UN or Coalition), you have to do your best with what you have to work with.

Generally, you get what you pay for. So, the 500m target may be great (low decimal MOA groupings ), but the 500m shooter may find that all the other targets from 25m up are occupied by other shooters.

So, this is not a knock on the practitioners, but on the bosses.

Regards

Mike

[Steve the Planner]

Mike:

Generally, when yopu go into a store to pruchase a good, you get what you pay for.

When you go into a country to nation-build, quite often you end up with a $53 Billion Fiasco, the term usually applied to the Iraq Reconstruction effort.

The numbers, to date, programmed for Afghanistan are $60 billion, an amount which, of well spent, should have long ago begun to demonstrate substantial change---but has not.

Afghans argue that ll the money gets absorbed by overhead and contractors, and only a fraction ever reaches the ground in Afghanistan. A convincing argument, by all accounts.

Now, if you want to change Afghanistan---even if by linking islands--- you really have to create a plan to link Afghan islands, and not foreign NGO contract islands. Otherwise, you can expect nothing.

Poor Sec. Vilsack went to Nawa the other day, beaming about the $20 million ag program that, as he found out, is simply US specialists giving animal vaccinations, and no Afghan gov agencies engaged.

That, at least, is better than most aid (that never reaches the ground), but follows the giving out fish mode with little possibility of progress---other than to expect the US specialists to come again next year with more shots.

Why, one might ask, can't an Afghan HS grad be trained to go around giving shots? Obviously, there are a lot more considerations to answering that question than many would like to know about (mobility, safety, cultural/tribal/language compatibility, and on...). But, for our dream state to be reached, the goal must be to get an Afghan to deliver the shots, on a sustainable basis, or the effort is merely a fish.

Where is the capacity-building component of this? (Notwithstanding the huge risks, commitments, and hardships endured by the brave US ag person giving the shots that his boss (Vilsack) sent him there to administer.

Steve

[jmm99]

and have been saying it in 400+ posts. Leviathans are created and used in an attempt to solve problems that could be solved by minnows. However, it is easier to create one Leviathan than mobilize thousands of minnows.

In civil affairs, the problems (past and present) certainly can be indentified. The solutions are another thing entirely - there are barriers (rice bowls, venal politicians and a huge chattering class who depend on Leviathans); and there is no neat generalized cookbook that will work in every case.

I'm getting kinda busy here with a stack of minnow problems that can be solved by this minnow; but am still following this and other threads.

Regards

Mike